Time
by TheNextPage
Summary: Time did not move as it should, as it had, as it did. Or maybe, Michonne thought, it was simply that there was just so much...just so so much.


Time did not move as it should, as it had, as it did. Or maybe, Michonne thought, it was simply that there was just so much...just so so much.

It felt like mere moments since she had had to walk away from Deanna, that latin phrase looping in her head: _Someday, this pain will be useful, to you_. It had only been a second ago since Father Gabriel walked Judith to shelter and safety – time all but ceasing between each measured step he took away from them amidst the dead. And it had been all of an instant, watching Sam then Jessie die.

Yet, all of eternity waded through quicksand when Ron raised his gun and pointed it. And she had hesitated... more like prayed that the boy wouldn't be so foolish. That he wouldn't try and threaten Rick. That he wouldn't think of taking that shot. But she realised, on a long exhale mingled with a petition for forgiveness, she knew that Ron had been too often on the wrong side of Rick's decisive strokes to think the young boy any more rational than being driven by his pain; to imagine he held Rick in any higher regard than the Walkers who were feasting on his family.

First his father: his flawed, _masculinity-so-fragile_ father. His brother – merely a frightened little boy – had died. His mother – heartbrokem, confused and scared - had been unceremoniously cut off from Rick's sympathies, all in the name of saving _his family_. Ron had done nothing but lose since Rick and his family arrived. Maybe, just maybe, taking this shot would go some way to bringing Carl to his level. So he raised his arms up, cradled the gun in his hands and steadied his target within his sights...

That's when she drove the katana through him: clean from behind his shoulder, severing his subclavian vein until a gleaming lance protruded forth in Ron's left periphery. A swift, efficient move to stop him cold. His left hand fell away from the gun, losing his original target. But his last motion, as he crumpled to the ground swiftly dying, was the involuntary twitch of the fingers on his right hand.

Michonne took no delight in felling the young boy. But he threatened her family, even as the greater enemy swirled around them. He wasn't designed for this new world; honestly, none of his family had been. She hoped he would find them in the next.

Turning to ensure Rick was fine, his curt nod conveyed everything words could not: _thank you, again; I'm so sorry; we're going to make it; we're in this together...always_. But then his face crumpled, as Carl turned awkwardly. And something heavy and leaden dragged at the fringes of time again, as she caught sight of blood where there shouldn't have been any, and a missing something jarring otherwise completeness.

Then her boy collapsed.

As Rick collected a maimed Carl, the only thought – uncommunicated but tacitly understood - was that he had to be saved. So Michonne cut a path to the infirmary, not seeing anything but the door that would lead to Carl being ok. Walkers stepped in her path and were cut down. There was the substance of noise and commotion all around her, but it was removed and outside of her. There was only Rick, carrying Carl, a mere step behind her, and she had to get to the infirmary. There was no question of Denise being there. There was only Rick, carrying her boy, and they needed only to make it to the door.

Bursting through the open doorway into the bright light of the indoors didn't even register. Rick depositing Carl on the prepared towel-lined gurney was rote. There was a moment she did grasp though, one in which she was aware: Michonne was present in the moment of removing the Walker-smeared sheet from over Rick's head. She distinctly owned that moment – removing death from around his shoulders, leaving him vulnerable and bare.

Time did its trick again of running away ahead, stealing moments. Like Rick turning from view and disappearing back into the fray to quell his bloodlust didn't immediately inspire any reaction; Denise flinging the cowboy hat aside, wiping away a steady rivulet of blood from Carl's face – all moments that happened between one breath and the next. But all Michonne saw was Carl, who had crawled into the cavernous space in her heart and made himself at home. And now the blood staining his face felt like it was leaking from between her ribs and out of her body. The marred nothingness that was once an eye was less upsetting; his motionless body laid small and rendered frail was the greater shock.

Denise worked quickly and calmly, sopping up the blood and closing up the open wound.

"Rick is out there!" Michonne pleaded. 'Move faster!' She screamed in her thoughts.

"Hold on."

"He needs my help." _Clearly Denise did not understand. They were in this, together. Always_.

"Just one more suture"

"But he's out there."

 _They had made it to the door, thus Carl simply_ _ **had to be**_ _alright. They had reached Alexandria, they had had walls, they had diverted a herd... Everything simply had to be alright._ But right now, Rick was _alone._

Out there.

"This is his son. Give me a second."

Michonne looked up at the stern set of Denise's features; ignored the slight condescension she _knew_ the woman hadn't meant; forgave the mild rebuke and misclassification of 'his son' instead of 'your son'. Michonne exhaled and dared time to crawl along in this moment, knowing it would take only the heartbeat between Carl being all right to free her to being able to be outside beside Rick.

"Ok, got it." Denise looped the last bit of thread and cut it off deftly.

Michonne leant down and kissed her son on the forehead. Not an "I-might-die-so-this-is-goodbye kiss, but a 'Rest-well-while-I'm-gone-for-a-moment kiss'. As she backed away from a still-in-shock, sedated Carl, she allowed time to lull her into believing her son was merely sleeping. She welcomed the extra half-beat between standing up from over the gurney to turning away towards the door, allowing her an extra half-beat to let the realisation sink in: her boy had been shot, but he was going to be all right.

Unbidden, Deanna's maxim came to mind: 'Some day, this pain will be useful, to you.'

And time allowed her to contemplate: losing Anthony, finding Andrea, meeting Rick's family and bonding with Carl, losing Andrea, losing the prison, losing hope... That had all happened, occasioned by varying emotions – pain and loss constant undercurrents through it all.

When the world had fallen and she had lost her little boy, the pain she had carried with her, that she had chained up and dragged around as her safety blanket... it had all shaped and led her to this moment. And maybe, there was something in this pain that would be a useful lesson to Carl some day in the future. She was relieved to know that he would live to find out.

Then time returned to its frenetic pace, and she was at the door, running out.


End file.
